Customer Reviews

Society Girls: A Novel (Colshannon Sisters)

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Clemmie Colshannon returns crawling to her actor parents' home in Cornwall to wait tables after her globetrotting around the world proved disastrous following the loss of her job and her boyfriend importance in that order. However, she has no time to mope as she learns that Bristol Gazette society pages editor Emma McKellan has vanished one week before her marriage to Charlie Davidson over the objection of her wealthy father solicitor Sir Christopher.

The Bristol Gazette crime reporter Clemmie's sister Holly (see PLAYING JAMES) thinks Sir C has abducted his daughter to prevent the nuptials and she plans to break the story. She enlists Clemmie to assist her, but the bumbling siblings uncover a lot more than an irate father protecting his daughter from a gold-digger. Instead they connect Sir C to a drug case involving Charlie, who he put behind bars, and learn that Emma is pregnant and being used by Charlie to enact revenge. When Charlie realizes what the sisters are doing he switches targets causing Clan Colshannon to invade France.

The second Colshannon tale is a wacky amateur sleuth tale starring an eccentric crowd that seems like the Little Foys were turned on their head. The investigative story line hooks the audience as much for the interrelationship between the lead family as for the mystery. Readers will appreciate this amusing mystery and look forward to a third Colshannon sibling leading miscues in a future cozy.

Harriet Klausner

This is another great book from Mason, who always manages to repackage boy meets girl palatably & deliver a fresh take on the usual.

Following on from the book "Playing James", which starred Holly, Clem is the wayward younger sister.

When she is fired from her job due to the duplistic dealings of her former colleague & boyfriend, Clem retreats to the family house to lick her wounds.

Unfortunately big sister Holly hunts her down, and manages to bully her into some rather unsavory doings involving break and enters, all in an attempt to get a scoop on a society girl from Hollys newspaper who has gone missing just before her wedding.

As Clem finds a fresh love interest where she never expected to look, the entire mad clan end up on the run over in France where all sorts of interesting things happen.

Great entertaining book, and there hasn't been a book by Sophie Mason yet which I've not enjoyed.

Back home in Cornwall sans a boyfriend and career, Clemmie Colshannon is waiting tables when her sister Holly, a reporter for the Bristol Gazette talks her into looking for missing heiress and society reporter Emma McKellan who disappeared after announcing a hasty engagement. After a scary run in with Emma's father, Holly suspects that he abducted her because the groom is not desirable. The two could not be more wrong, but when confronted with the truth, the whole family invades the south of France to elude an unstable groom, while Clemmie's eyes are suddenly open to a new love she never saw coming.

Parts of Mason's follow up to "Playing James" are hysterical, but overall, the story is very uneven and the lead character sort of boring. Clemmie is overshadowed by her raucous family - particularly her mum and pet seagull. The magic of the first novel is missing - making it just an average read.

I have to say that Norman the recovering seagull was by far my favorite character in this book! What a fun, unique, and laugh out loud book! Society Girls picks up with the Colshannon family but this time with the focus on Clemmie, the slighty neurotic youger sister. Clemmie has recently returned to Cornwall after a trip around the world. Without a job or boyfriend, Clemmie finds herself working in a cafe and spending time at home avoiding Norman the seagull. Clemmie's sister, Holly, comes down for a visit and recounts to Clemmie the mysterious story of Emma from the paper that Holly works for going missing. The girls go off in search of clues, and begin their detective work to track down the missing Emma. The story takes off from there and the girls find themselves travelling to France in this funny, laugh-out-loud story.

Definately a book worth reading!

This book was a fun and enjoyable read! Clemmie was a character to which one can relate. She and Holly were a good mischievious team! I have added her books Playing James and Party Girl to my Wish List and I am looking forward to reading them!

I stopped reading halfway through, it was boring and anti-climatic. Mason's first book, 'Playing James', was excellent--witty, intersting, and fun. Save your money on this book.

Is it just me or does this book's plot got a strong resemblance to the bestseller book "The Old-Girl Network" by Catherine Alliot? Even the characters are extremely similar: unsuspecting helpful gall helps a looney jilted boyfriend find his girlfriend who's being hidden by her dad. Strange coincidence?

Clemmie Colshannon is running out of luck. After finding out her boyfriend is a complete slum (him being the main reason of losing her job as a London art appraiser) and having a disastrous trip around the world, Clemmie finds herself living back at home. Her family is eclectic at best, with a drama queen actress as a mother with a passion for wild animals, (including a recuperating seagull), a brother with a secret crush that he is changing all his ways for, and a reporter for a sister that gets Clemmie wrapped up in what turns out to be a dangerous story.
Holly Colshannon, whom readers first met in Playing James, has found a juicy story involving another writer at the newspaper, Emma the society writer. Emma has mysteriously disappeared, and the girls learn she was secretly planning to get married to a man her father did not approve of. While trying to help Emma get her fiancé back, the sisters inadvertently put Emma (and their whole family) in danger.
Society Girls by Sarah Mason delivers a humorous story, with the supporting cast really giving the story line something extra. It was a little slow in the beginning, but the humor kept me going until the real drama started happening. Chick lit readers will also enjoy the love story that is fairly obvious to all but the heroine, and overall Society Girls makes for an entertaining read.

Again, another book by Sarah Mason with her brand of humour, a plot full of intrigue, unexpected pairing of new romances, fast paced action and rollicking with pandemonium. She brings in her earlier characters, Holly & James & Holly's parents from her first novel "Playing James" & blends them skillfully with a new cast.

Sisters-in-sleuth, Clemmie and Holly Colshannon join forces, though reluctantly for Clemmie for lack of nothing to do, to find a missing colleague of Holly who is a reporter at the Bristol Gazette. Emma is the missing colleauge who is also a rich socialite & Holly feels that finding her would be very news worthy for her own column.

Holly, forever effusive and serial breaker of rules & regulations, is the leader while her elder sister, Clemmie is the follower. James is not far behind in catching up to salvage the damage caused by both. Mind you, this book's central charcter is Clemmie not Holly but somehow Holly's misdeeds overshadow Clemmie's timid character. There were many times when I forgot that Clemmie was the protagonist as both old & new characters introduced tend to overshadow Clemmie with their more interesting personalities.

The plot escalates to something of a hit and run rescue operation gone wrong by Holly & Clemmie with a formerly convicted prisoner trailing them at every place the Colshannon clan appears to be both in Cornwall & in southern France where they eventually fled to lose track of him.

The setting of the plot in vacation spots of Europe lend an air of escapism and arm chair travel: Cornwall in southern England and Cote d'Azur in southern France which are accurately described if you have been there.

A good read as always for a book by Sarah Mason.

I got about 1/2 way through the book then decided to stop reading it. The first haf was good then I didn't see why it needed to go on. Just bored me. It didn't grab my attention like some chick lit mysteries have. I got it for $1 at a used book store, so I didn't waste much.